National News Flash 21 of 2013: An update on SACE point system for educators

National News

National News Flash 21 of 2013: An update on SACE point system for educators

AN UPDATE ON SACE POINT SYSTEM FOR EDUCATORS

NAPTOSA members will have heard by now of the SACE Continuing Professional Teacher Development points system (CPTD). By means of this system educators will be expected to achieve 150 Professional Development points over a 3 year cycle.

BUT, and this is critical, points may not be accumulated BEFORE the start of the cycle nor may they be carried over from one cycle to another.

The cycle for:

Principals & Deputies starts 01 January 2014

Heads of Departments starts 01 January 2015

Teachers starts 01 January 2016

So effectively, although HODSâ€™s and teachers may be attending endorsed courses next year, the points attached to these courses will not be taken into account for SACE purposes.In the same way endorsed courses attended by teachers during 2015 will also not count towards their required 150 points. However, whether or not points are awarded, the professional development during the interim period continues to add value so be sure to consult our website to see what is available from NAPTOSA.

Principals and Deputiesneed to ensure that they have submitted a Profile form to SACE and they should begin putting their Personal Professional Development Portfolio together and accumulating points from January 2014.For more information on the CPTD system read the article under â€œWhatâ€™s new?â€ on the NAPTOSA website.

ANA RESULTS

The Department of Basic Education is expected to release the 2013 ANA results in the near future. At the NAPTOSA Council Meeting held in October 2013, delegates expressed their concern about the entire ANA system. There has been an over emphasis on preparing learners for the ANA â€“ districts / provinces have held ANA Fridays and ANA weeksâ€“ schools and teachers are being instructed to focus their teachingon the standardised test (exemplars) -â€œteaching to the test.â€This practice invariably delivers false performance results and is clearly educationally unsound.

The ANA appears to have become an end in itself. The purpose of the ANAs is to verify whether every learner in every school is developing the literacy and numeracy skills appropriate for the grade and to determine whether a learner needs extra help or not. It will be interesting to read the DBEâ€™s interpretation of the 2013 ANA results.